I am not an atheist
I should have put it as a disclaimer in the previous post, but somehow forgot. No harm seems to have come from that, though and now it develops into a separate post.
I understand if people do not believe in any of the religions, if they do not believe in worships or particular modes of worships, if they do not believe in particular conception of God(s), if they do not believe in temples, mosques or churches. But I do not understand how people can really not believe in a power above human beings. At any point of time the knowledge humans have with them is finite. You keep adding how and why to questions and you will at some point of time exhaust all the knowledge present. How are you explain things that happen then? Apples used to fall on earth since long before Newton thought of gravitation and planets used to go around sun in the way they do long before Galileo talked of planetary motion. How is it that one can deny something above us, even if you don't call Him/Her God (well, some people wonder if God is male or female - and why shouldn't they!)?
Any atheists around?
Categories: Thoughts
I understand if people do not believe in any of the religions, if they do not believe in worships or particular modes of worships, if they do not believe in particular conception of God(s), if they do not believe in temples, mosques or churches. But I do not understand how people can really not believe in a power above human beings. At any point of time the knowledge humans have with them is finite. You keep adding how and why to questions and you will at some point of time exhaust all the knowledge present. How are you explain things that happen then? Apples used to fall on earth since long before Newton thought of gravitation and planets used to go around sun in the way they do long before Galileo talked of planetary motion. How is it that one can deny something above us, even if you don't call Him/Her God (well, some people wonder if God is male or female - and why shouldn't they!)?
Any atheists around?
Categories: Thoughts
posted by Jaya @ 6:00 PM
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2 Comments:
At Thu Feb 24, 01:19:00 PM 2005,
Jaya said…
Since I am removing the Haloscan Comments, I am copy-pasting the comments I got on this post here.
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"but how can one not believe in God, in the sense of a power above humans"
How do we define God? In my opinion our "environment" is the God in which we survive. (Does It have intelligence!)
Probably "He" is the rule that is controling the universe. (Huh! Rules? we made some of them). Or is He the universe itself. (Learnt that Universe is expanding..probably He's getting older).
I argue, come on,..if You Exist..give me a hint!
But you see Me...feel Me...talk to Me...your are in Me...but hey, you are lost in Mrigtrishna...keep finding Me!
If you believe that I cannot be nature, because you can destroy it, overpower it! Once I was Sun, Earth...Today I am not...Why? only because you know a bit more about Sun...or because you know more about Earth? So, I have to be Someone more powerful than you...beyond you...than, you should also not panic about robots overpowering you someday, because they are your own creation! You are their God by your definition...Yeah, Today y
Sandeep | 01.03.05 - 4:00 pm | #
I am an atheist! Why? because I destroy my God...Nature...Probably Nature did not know that his own creation may sometime destroy Him. But, probably He's more intelligent...If He dies, we'll die.
Sandeep | 01.03.05 - 4:10 pm | #
At Sun Apr 03, 04:18:00 PM 2005,
Anonymous said…
A touch late, but a comment anyway:
Even an atheist would believe in a power above human beings. Of course, nature is much more powerful than man, as is obvious in the devastation caused by mere vibrations of earth, and fear of asteroids, etc. But what an atheist would deny is existence of an intention behind this power.
An athiest's belief would be:
There's no good or evil spirit behind super-human events that happen in a person's life. The events are a logical conclusion to the way the system is, with the uncertainity being accounted for by probabilistic nature of the world, and not "luck", as its common notion stands.
As far as finiteness of knowledge is concerned, really, you can not exhaust all the knowledge present. A simple example is mathematics: you can keep finding results (for example, the largest prime number) endlessly. And you can even find different kinds of results endlessly. Quite a lot of knowledge that we possess is by identification and classification: we classify objects, events, entities... everything and group them together by identification. This classification and identification can go on endlessly, since there are infinitely many objects, events and entities.
Any small knowledge that we have has endless potential, so there is no possibility of exhausting all knowledge.
Yes, there are things we (as humans) can not explain (yet?). There are phenomena beyond our grasp ('I', the sense of self, I believe is the biggest challenge). But instead of crediting some mystic super-natural being for their creation, let's attempt at explaining it. It may seem futile, but there are things we can now explain which were believed to be inexplicable a little while ago.
We, the athiests, are decreasing the sphere of God's power. With each discovery, each explanation, we decrease the mystrey that's accrued to Him. Maybe we won't succeed. Maybe we are wrong, but prove to us that we are wrong. Till the date you don't, we'll continue to believe in non-existence of God. Not because we have a proof of non-existence either, but because that is the rational route to take in absence of a proof or justification.
The day we accept our defeat, that day would also be a day of our victory, since we would be able to believe in the alternative: the existence of God.
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